Taylor Newman holds the flag while Hannah Stiles finishes bring down the rope at the end of the school day Friday outside Western.

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For the past 102 years, the Western School Building on Cherry Street has served as a venue for learning in the Chillicothe City Schools.

The district's sixth grade, however, has been transient, moving from building to building as the district has grown or - more recently - dwindled in size.

The two converged in 2007 when sixth-grade classes were relocated to Cherry Street. This past Monday, their fates became intertwined when the Board of Education approved more than $640,000 in budget reductions that include the permanent closure of Western and the relocation of the sixth-grade classes to ...